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Advocates for protecting school funding say New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo hasn't lived up to his word on creating a more equitable funding system in the state. A report released this week says that the recent state budget approved by Cuomo, a Democrat elected last year, and state lawmakers results in cuts that are three times as large in poor districts as wealthy ones.

In light of the problem in New Jersey and in other states as well, perhaps it's time to consider what is known as weighted student funding. The Summer 2011 issue of the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management contains a study by Helen F. Ladd and Edward B. Fiske titled "Weighted Student Funding in the Netherlands: A Model for the U.S.?" For the past quarter of a century, the Netherlands has been using a version of WSF for all its elementary schools serving children from ages 4 to 12.

Charter schools across Oregon learned three weeks before school started that they would not receive up to $225,000 each in grants from the state. From Portland to Bandon, school directors scrambled to fill the void, cutting supplies, counselors, computers, library materials and turning to parents for more donations. In a few cases, the loss of start-up funds may postpone schools opening until next year. Charter school leaders want to know why they lost the expected funds and why they weren't told sooner. The state says the federal government is at fault; the federal government put the onus back on the state. Either way, it could have a long-lasting impact on the schools.

Elementary and high schools are receiving less state funding than last year in at least 37 states, and in at least 30 states school funding now stands below 2008 levels - often far below. These cuts are attributable, in part, to the failure of the federal government to extend emergency fiscal aid to states and school districts and the failure of most states to enact needed revenue increases and instead to balance their budgets solely through spending cuts. The cuts have significant consequences, both now and in the future: They are causing immediate public- and private-sector job loss, and in the long term are likely to reduce student achievement and economic growth.

Hundreds of parents, students and community leaders rallied Sunday outside a state office building in Hauppauge, demanding that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo provide Long Island's schools with funding in proportion to what the region pays in taxes.

This policy brief revisits the long and storied literature on whether money matters in providing a quality education. Increasingly, political rhetoric adheres to the unfounded certainty that money doesn't make a difference in education, and that reduced funding is unlikely to harm educational quality. Such proclamations have even been used to justify large cuts to education budgets over the past few years. These positions, however, have little basis in the empirical research on the relationship between funding and school quality.  

A newly-created state school district, the Educational Achievement System (EAS), will begin in Fall 2012 as part of Gov. Rick Snyder's education reform. At that point, it begins receiving state and federal per-pupil funding. Until then, the new system will operate as the only public district in the nation supported entirely by private donations. A newly-formed business entity, the Michigan Education Excellence Foundation, is collecting private monies for the operation of the Education Achievement Authority (EAA), the board that will oversee and implement the EAS, a statewide district for "low-performing" public schools.

In a ruling that could have multi-billion dollar consequences for Colorado's budget, a Denver judge ruled the state's school funding system is not "thorough and uniform" as mandated by the state constitution. The state's school funding system "is not rationally related to the mandate to establish and maintain a thorough and uniform system of free public schools," District Judge Sheila Rappaport said in her 183-page ruling in which she called the system "unconscionable."

I've heard it over and over again from reform pundits. Funding equity? Been there done that. It doesn't make a damn bit of difference. It's all about teacher quality! The bottom line is that equitable and adequate financing of schools is a NECESSARY UNDERLYING CONDITION FOR EVERYTHING ELSE!

This policy brief revisits the long and storied literature on whether money matters in providing a quality education. Increasingly, political rhetoric adheres to the unfounded certainty that money doesn't make a difference in education, and that reduced funding is unlikely to harm educational quality. Such proclamations have even been used to justify large cuts to education budgets over the past few years. These positions, however, have little basis in the empirical research on the relationship between funding and school quality.

New York is on notice: The feds are threatening to yank nearly $1 billion in education funding unless the state adopts a new teacher evaluation system. Senior members of U.S. Education Secretary Arnie Duncan's office warned Gov. Cuomo's team Friday that New York would lose the staggering sum - at least $300 million more than previously thought - if the state made no progress on a system to grade teachers, a source with direct knowledge of the discussions said.

I've seen a number of tweets and vague media references of late about the fact that NJ Education Commissioner Cerf will at some point in the near future be providing recommendations for how to change the School Funding Reform Act of 2008.

Doris and Donald Fisher, founders of the GAP clothing company, began contributing to education-related causes through various philanthropic organizations in the late 1990s. The Doris and Donald Fisher Fund is the current foundation, although it was formerly known as the Doris and Donald Fisher Education Fund, is still sometimes abbreviated as D2F2, and earlier was known as the Pisces Foundation. The Fishers were early supporters of Edison Schools, and have been major supporters of KIPP and Teach for America. Although I cannot find some of the Fisher's earliest IRS 990s, the family also supported a young organization, The New Teacher Project, founded by Michelle Rhee. As noted on the Fisher's 2011 Form 990, the foundation contributed $250,000 to Rhee's newest organization, StudentsFirst. I gathered Form 990s for the fiscal years ending in 2003 through 2011, and pulled information about contributions made during each of those years. You can find all of these Form 990s through Guidestar.org or Foundation Center's 990 Finder. You can see the information I pulled in an Excel file on my Data page or check out the results below.

"NJ Spotlight today posted a story on upcoming Task Force deliberations and public hearings over whether the state should continue to target funding in its school finance formula to local districts on the basis of counts of children qualifying for free or reduced priced lunch.  That is, kids from families who fall below the 185% income threshold for poverty. The basic assumption behind targeting additional resources to higher poverty schools and districts is that high need districts can leverage the additional resources to implement strategies that help to improve various outcomes for children at risk. "

Charter schools would expand and get more money under a plan by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's administration to be announced Monday, but some of the additional funding would have to come from local school districts. The proposal would increase per-pupil funding for charter schools from $9,400 to $12,000. Of that, $1,000 for the first time would be paid by the districts where those students live, according to sources who have been briefed on the plan. For districts like Bridgeport, which sends about 1,400 students to charter school, the cost would be $1.4 million annually.

Public school teachers from around the state gathered at the Free Speech Monument on the Downtown Mall Saturday afternoon to protest education funding cuts, high-stakes testing and the proposed state budget. The event, called the Wake for Public Education, was designed to attract attention to dwindling public education funding. Albemarle Education Association President Frank Podrebarac told the crowd the gathering was not to mourn a loss, but to tell state lawmakers that public education is still alive.

Late yesterday, the New Jersey Department of Education Released its long awaited report on the state school finance formula. For a little context, the formula was adopted in 2008 and upheld by the court as meeting the state constitutional standard for providing a thorough and efficient system of public schooling. But, court acceptance of the plan came with a requirement of a review of the formula after three years of implementation. After a change in administration, with additional legal battles over cuts in aid in the interim, we now have that report.  The idea was that the report would suggest any adjustments that may need to be made to the formula to make the distributions of aid across districts more appropriate/more adequate (more constitutional?). I laid out my series of proposed minor adjustments in a previous post. Reduced to its simplest form, the current report argues that New Jersey's biggest problem in public education is its achievement gap - the gap between poor and minority students and between non-poor and non-minority students.  And the obvious proposed fix? To reduce funding to high poverty, predominantly minority school districts and increase funding to less poor districts with fewer minorities. Why? Because money and class size simply don't matter. Instead, teacher quality and strategies like those  used in Harlem Childrens' Zone do! Here's my quick, day-after, critique

IDEA Money Watch is keeping track of the use of $11.3 billion in federal funds being provided to local school districts as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Special education advocates across the nation are keeping watch on the use of these funds and how the academic achievement of students with disabilities is improving as a result.

The Woonsocket Education Department believes that Rhode Island's new formula for funding education does not go far enough to meet the challenges of the state's urban communities and is joined by Pawtucket in a lawsuit to address the system.

"The video below is a short preview of the 34-minute video "School Choice: Taxpayer-Funded Creationism, Bigotry, and Bias."  Private schools receiving funding through "school choice" programs are using A Beka Book, Bob Jones University Press, and other Protestant fundamentalist curricula.  The textbooks in these series teach that dinosaurs lived on earth with humans; deny global warming; promote hostility toward other religions and other sectors of Christianity (particularly Roman Catholicism); provide a biased and often factually incorrect version of history; and teach extreme laissez-faire economics, claimed to be biblically-based."